Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso

Pachotin, most correctly attired, with a collar which reached to the tips of his ears and faultless yellow gloves, hopped around her in the true affected knightly grimacing Polish-mazurka manner.

"An ape!" thought Lensky to himself; "but how handsome, how distinguished he is! almost as handsome as she!" and suddenly the question occurred to him: "Is it my music or his presence which animates her? And if it were my music! Nevertheless, she will still marry him; yes, even if she were in love with me, still she would marry him, and not me! What a fool I was to imagine----"

After Pachotin had soberly placed his heels together and acknowledged his deep devotion to the lady by a suitable courtesy, the mazurka was at an end.

Quite beside themselves with enthusiasm, the Parisians surrounded Natalie. When she wished to thank Lensky he had disappeared. It was his manner many times to withdraw without taking leave, but still to-day it made Natalie uneasy. She was vibrating with a great excitement, the air seemed to her suffocatingly hot, she drew off her gloves; the noise of the prattling voices became unbearable to her, and she passed through the second empty drawing-room, into the arched loggia set with blooming orange-trees, from which one looked across the court-yard to the Tiber.

The storm still hung on the horizon. Heavy masses of clouds, shot through by pale lightning, towered, on the other side of the river, above the gloomy architecture of the Trastevere. They had not yet reached the moon, which, palely shining, stood high in the heavens. Its light illumined the court, with its statues and bas-reliefs. The air was sultry.

Natalie drew a deep breath. Suddenly she discovered Lensky. He was staring down on the Tiber, which, rolling by in its bed, incessantly sighed, as if from sorrow at its sad lot, which compelled it continually to hasten past everything.

Could one really take it amiss in the stream if it sometimes overflowed its banks in order to carry away with it some of the beautiful objects, near which, condemned to perpetual wandering, it might not remain standing?

"Ah! you here?" said Natalie. "I thought you had taken French leave. I was vexed with you."

"So!"

"Yes, because--because I was sorry not to be able to thank you. It was really----"

"Do not speak so," said he, quite roughly; "just as if you did not know that there is nothing in the world, nothing in my power that I would not do for you!"

She bent her head back a little and smiled at him in a friendly way, but as if his words had not surprised her in the slightest. "You are very good to me," said she.

He felt strangely thus alone with her in this sweet-perfumed, melancholy, intoxicating sultriness, alone with this happiness that was so near him, and which he was afraid of frightening away by an unseemly imprudence. He felt by turns hot and cold. Why did she not go?

She rested her hands on the marble balustrade of the loggia and bending over it she murmured: "How beautiful! oh, how wonderfully beautiful! And it is so tiresome in there; do you not find it so, Boris Nikolaivitch?"

His throat contracted, he felt that he was about to lose control of himself.

"Shall I play?" he asked. "I will do it willingly for you."

"Oh, no! Why should you play to those stupid people in there?" replied she. "I would be prepared to hear, in the middle of the G minor concerto, the question: 'Before I forget it, can you not give me the address of a good shoemaker in Rome?' You know how such things vex me."

"Is she coquetting with me, or--?" he asked himself again.

She stood before him with her enchanting face, and her tender glance met his. She did not know that she tormented him. In spite of her twenty-one years, she had the boundless innocence of a girl whose mind has never been desecrated by the knowledge of passion, a degree of innocence in which men do not believe.

"Is she coquetting?" His heart beat to bursting, and suddenly, when she quite unconstrainedly came one step nearer him, he took her hand. "Oh, you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoarse, scarcely audible voice, and pressed it to his lips.

Crimsoning, she tore away her hand. "For Heaven's sake, what are you thinking of?" said she, and started back with a proud, almost scornful gesture.

Then a horrible anger overcame him.

"I was stupid, I was mistaken in you. You think no more nobly or better than the others!" he burst out.

"I do not understand you. What do you mean?" murmured she.

What else had she to ask? Why did she not go, but stood before him, as if paralyzed, with her pale, seductive loveliness, surrounded by moonlight?

"I mean that if you observe our relations from this conventional standpoint, your behavior to me was a heartless, arrogant abomination."

"But, Boris Nikolaivitch, that is all foolishness. You do not know what you are saying," she stammered, quite beside herself.

"So! I do not know what I am saying?" He had now stepped close up to her. "And if I, mistaking your coquetries--yes, that is the word; blush now and be a little ashamed--if I, mistaking your coquetries, have permitted myself to petition for your hand? Oh, how you start! Naturally, you had never thought of such a thing!"

His voice was hoarse and rasping, his face very calm and as if petrified by anger and such a mental torment as he had never before experienced. "But go! Why do you stay and torture me? I will no longer look at you. I abominate you, and still I love you so passionately, so madly!"

Yes, why did she still not go? He could endure it no longer--he clasped her to his breast and kissed her with his hot, burning lips. Then she pushed him from her and fled.

He looked after her. Now all was over. For one moment he remained standing on the same spot, then, with deeply bowed head, dragging his feet along slowly, he passed through the vestibule and left, without thinking of his hat, which he had left in the drawing-room.

For the remainder of the evening Natalie's whole being betrayed only haste and uneasiness. She spoke more and quicker than formerly, laughed frequently, and told the gayest stories.

When her Petersburg cousins wished to tease her with Lensky's enthusiasm for her, and laughingly called him "your genius," she mentioned him indifferently, quite disapprovingly, shrugged her shoulders over his talent as composer--yes, even found fault with his playing. She was friendly, quite inviting, to Pachotin; she no longer knew what she did, only when he wished to give the conversation a more earnest turn she broke it off suddenly and remorselessly.

When at last, at last, the drawing-room was empty and she might withdraw, she locked herself in her room, threw herself down before the holy picture before which she always said her evening prayer. But, however she tried to pray, she could not. She did not know for what she should pray. Her cheeks burned with dreadful shame. How could he have so far forgotten himself with her!

She threw open a window. What did it matter to her that they said the Roman night air was poisonous? She would have liked to take the Roman fever, would have liked to die. Her window opened on the street. The Via Giulia was divided by the moonlight into two parts, one light and one dark. All was quiet, empty, deserted. Then there was a sound of slow, dragging steps, and two lowered voices whispered down there in the silent solitude. It was probably a pair of belated lovers, and suddenly there was a soft, tender sound through the mild May night. She caught her breath, closed the window, and turned back to her room. Half-undressed, she sat on the edge of her little cool white bed and thought again and again--of the same thing--of his kiss.

* * * * * *

"Why has 'your genius' so suddenly tired of Rome? He leaves to-day," remarked the Jeliagins, who had come to lunch the next morning in the Palazzo Morsini.

They were staying at the same hotel as Lensky--that is to say, in the "Europe"--and had spoken to him in the court of the hotel. "He looked miserably," they added, with a haughty glance. "Either he has Roman fever or you have broken his heart."

Then they spoke of other things. Soon after lunch they went away.

Meanwhile Lensky stumbled up and down, up and down, in his room. A sick lady whose room was beneath his, at last sent up by the waiter and begged him to be quiet.

His departure was fixed for seven o'clock; it struck one, it struck four.

Should he leave without having made a parting call upon the Princess Assanow run away like any fellow who has borrowed thirty rubles? "But they will not receive me," he thought, "if the princess has told her mother. But, no, she will have said nothing; she is too proud. What a lovely being! How could I only-- Oh, if I might at least ask her pardon! But what kind of a pardon would it be? Such a thing a woman pardons only if she loves, and how should she love me, a beast as I am? She must have an aversion for me."

He resolved to take leave by letter. He tried it in French and Russian, but could complete nothing. Ashamed of his laughable incapacity, he tore up the different sheets of letter-paper adorned with "Des circonstances imprévues," or "La reconnaissance sincère que."

Five o'clock! He hastened across the courtyard, sprang into a carriage. "Palazzo Morsini, Via Giulia," he called to the coachman, and commanded him to drive fast.

When he ascended the well-known stairs he asked himself a last time if he would be received.

The servant conducted him to the boudoir of the old princess. She broke off her game of patience to greet him, only betrayed a slight astonishment at his sudden departure, and said that she and Natalie should soon follow his example and go North, probably to Baden-Baden, for the heat in Rome began to be unbearable. Then she rang for the maid, whom she commissioned to tell the princess that Boris Nikolaivitch had come to take leave.

Lensky waited in breathless excitement. The maid came back with the decision: The princess was very ill and had lain down with a headache.

"Quite as I expected," thought Lensky, while the princess remarked politely, "She will be very sorry."

Then he kissed the old lady's hand, she touched his forehead with her lips in the Russian custom, wished him a pleasant journey, he thanked her a last time for all the friendship she had shown him, and went--went quite slowly through the large empty room, in which the dust danced in a broad sunbeam which lay across the marble floor, and in which the flowers which she had arranged so charmingly yesterday now stood withered in their vases.

"Shall I never see her again, never--never?" he asked himself. He would have given his life for a last friendly glance from her. What use was it to think of that--it was all over!

Then suddenly he heard something near him like the rustling of an angel's wings. He looked up. Natalie stood before him, deathly pale, with black rings around her eyes, with carelessly arranged hair. A passionate pity, a tender anxiety overcame him. "How she has suffered through my offence!" he told himself and rushed up to her. "Natalie, can you forgive me?" he called.

Her great, sad eyes were raised to him with an expression of helpless, ashamed tenderness, as if they would say, "And you ask that!" She moved her lips, but no word came.

He held her little hands trembling with fever in his. She did not draw them away. He grew dizzy. For one moment they were both silent, then he whispered, drawing her closer to him, "Do you love me, then? Could you resolve to bear my name, to share my whole existence?"

Scarcely audibly she whispered, "Yes."

We are sometimes frightened at the sudden fulfilment of a wish which we have believed unattainable.

And as Lensky under the weight of his new, strange happiness sank at the feet of his betrothed and covered the hem of her dress with tears and kisses, in the midst of his happiness he felt an oppressed anxiety, a great fear.

* * * * * *

A few days after Natalie's betrothal there was a short, imperious ring at the door of the artistic gray anteroom, in which the imposing butler, as usual, sat majestically intrenched behind his newspaper.

Monsieur Baptiste raised his eyebrows; he did not like this imperious manner of ringing a bell, and did not hurry at all to open the door. Only when the ring was repeated did he unlock it. His face changed color from surprise, and he bowed quite to the ground when he recognized in the entering gentleman the young prince, the eldest brother of Natalie, Sergei Alexandrovitch Assanow.

"Are the ladies at home?" he asked shortly in a high, somewhat vexed voice without further noticing the respectful greeting of the servant.

"The princess is still in bed, but the Princess Natalie is already up."

"Good. Do not disturb the princess, and announce me to Princess Natalie," said Assanow, and with that he followed the butler, who was hastening before him, into the drawing-room. There he sat down in a mahogany arm-chair upholstered in faded yellow damask, crossed his legs, rested his tall shining hat on his knee and looked around him. On one of his hands was a gray glove, the other was bare. It was a long, slender, aristocratic hand, very well cared for, too white for a man's hand, but bony, and with strongly marked veins on the back--a hand which one saw would certainly hold firmly what it had once grasped, and a hand which was capable of no caress. For the rest it would have been hard to judge anything from the exterior of the prince. He was a tall slender man of about thirty, with light-brown hair that was already thin on the top of the head, and a face--smoothly shaven except a long mustache--which in the cut of the delicate regular features resembled his sister's not unnoticeably. But the expression, that animating soul of beauty which lent Natalie's pale face more charm than the regularity of the lines, was lacking in him. Everything about him was as correct as his profile--his high stiff collar, the drab gaiters which showed beneath his trousers, his light-gray gloves with black stitching. He was the type of the Russian state official of the highest category, the type of men who in public life only permit themselves to think as far as will not injure their advancement.

As he was a very clever, sharp, judging man withal, he revenged himself for the discomfort which the systematic crippling of his intellectual capacity in the service of the state caused him, by devoting all the superfluity of his unneeded intellect to shedding an unpleasantly glaring intellectual light about him, and condemning as absolute foolishness all those little poetic, pleasant trifles which make life beautiful.

He called this manner of pleasing himself doing his duty.

Strangely enough, with all his sterile dryness he was a true lover of music. He played the cello as well as a man of the world can permit himself to--that is to say, with an elegant inaccuracy, together with pedantic bursts of virtuosity, and in consequence had cultivated Lensky's acquaintance assiduously.

While he waited for his sister he looked around the room distrustfully with his handsome dark but unpleasantly piercing eyes. He grew uneasy. The atmosphere of the whole room was quite permeated with happiness. Everything seemed to feel happy here--the shabby furniture, the music which lay somewhat confusedly on the piano. On the table near which Sergei Alexandrovitch sat stood a basket of pale Malmaison roses, under the piano was a violin case.

Sergei Alexandrovitch frowned. Then Natalie entered the room; he rose, went to meet her, kissed and embraced her. It seemed strange to her that she did not feel as glad to see him as formerly, but rather felt a kind of chill. Which of them had changed, he or she?

"What a surprise!" said she, and felt herself that her voice had a forced sound. "It has not formerly been your custom to appear so unexpectedly."

"My journey was only decided upon last month," replied he, somewhat hesitatingly; and with his dull smile he added, "I hope I do not arrive inopportunely, Natalie?"

"How can you ask such a thing!" said she. "But sit down and put your hat away--you are at home."

He remarked the uneasiness of her manner. He coughed twice, and then sat down again near the table on which the basket of roses stood.

Natalie sat down. Both hands resting on the red surface of the mahogany table, she bent over the flowers, and slowly with a kind of tenderness inhaled the dreamy, melancholy perfume.

"Have you had a pleasant winter?" began Sergei Alexandrovitch.

"I do not know," replied she without looking at him; "I have forgotten, but the spring was wonderfully beautiful, wonderfully beautiful," and she bent over the flowers again.

"Hm! So you prefer Rome to Naples?" said he condescendingly.

"Yes."

"You seem to have been very comfortably fixed here," he remarked, with a glance around. "You have very pretty rooms. Those are beautiful roses which you have there."

"Boris Lensky sent them to me," said she, while she at the same time pulled a rose from the basket to fasten it in the bodice of her light foulard dress. Then she sat down opposite Sergei. War was declared.

"Lensky seems to be a great deal with you," said Assanow, condescendingly.

"Yes."

"I heard of it through acquaintances in Petersburg," began the prince. "It did not quite please me."

Natalie only shrugged her shoulders, with an expression as if she would say: "I am very sorry, but that does not change matters at all." In spite of that she secretly trembled before her brother. The announcement which she had to make to him would not cross her lips.

"It is hard to speak of certain things to you," he continued, while he tried to make his thin high voice sound confidential. He did not wish to make his sister refractory by overhasty roughness. "I have no prejudices." It had recently become the fashion in his set, and especially for the upper ten thousand, to boast of a kind of harmless liberality. "No one can accuse me of smallness. I am always in favor of attracting young artists into society--first, because they form an animating element in our circles, and secondly, because one should give them an opportunity to improve their manners a little; but all in moderation. Too great intimacy in such cases is bad for both parties. You are too much carried away by the generosity of your heart. I know that in reality your immoderate kindness to Lensky does not mean much, but----"

Her wonderfully beautiful eyes met his.

"I am betrothed to Boris Nikolaivitch," said she wearily but very distinctly.

"Betrothed!" he burst out. "You to Lensky? You are crazy!"

"Not at all."

"Does mother know of it?"

"Certainly."

"And she has given her consent?"

"At first she was surprised; she cried a whole afternoon. I was very sorry to pain her. Then she gave way. She is very fond of him. Every one must be fond of him who learns to know him well." Natalie's eyes beamed with animation.

Sergei Alexandrovitch pulled at his mustache. "Hm, hm," he murmured; "we will leave that undecided. As it happens, I am one of those who know him well; there are few in our set who know him as intimately as I, and--hm--I do not know that he has caused me any very enthusiastic feelings. As artist I rank him very high, not so high as has been the fashion lately, for as a beau dire il manque de style, he lacks style! But that has nothing to do with this. But if he united in himself the genius of Beethoven and Paganini, I would still look upon the possibility of your alliance with him as unheard of, and I tell you frankly, that I shall do all that is in my power to prevent it." He had taken up again the hat which he had formerly laid down, and held it on his knee as if paying a call of state. While he spoke the last words, he knocked on the top of it with malicious decision.

Natalie crossed her arms.

"I knew that you would oppose the mésalliance," said she, "but----"

He would not let her finish. "Mésalliance!" said he, and laughed very mockingly, quite shortly and softly, to himself, and began to drum on the top of his hat again. "Mésalliance! I cannot say that the marriage of my sister to this Mr. Lensky would be especially pleasant--no, that I cannot say. What must be my horror at your undertaking if I scarcely think of my opposition on account of the unequal birth!" He was silent, but then as Natalie remained obstinately silent, he continued: "That you will in consequence change your social position is your affair. But do not believe that this will be all that you give up. You sacrifice not only your position, your whole personality, all your habits of life, but more than all these, you sacrifice all your formerly so spared and guarded womanly tender feeling if you insist upon marrying this violinist. Oh, I know what you will say," said he, while he noticed the glance which Natalie gave the roses on the table. "He is full of poetic attentions for you. When they are in love, the roughest men speak in verse. And I believe that he loves you. But his enthusiasm for you is still only a passing effervescence. What will remain when that is gone? I ask you, what would remain in a man without principles, without a trace of moral restraint, who has grown up amid surroundings which have forever blunted his feelings for things which would horrify you, and others of which you have no suspicion?"

Again he paused, but this time Natalie spoke: "May I ask you," began she, with the calm behind which irritation bordering on uncontrollable anger concealed itself--"may I ask you to tell me exactly, without any more finely veiled insinuations, what you have against Boris Nikolaivitch, except that he is of lower birth and has enjoyed no careful bringing up?"

"My God! If it is a question of my sister's future husband, that is enough and more than enough!" said Assanow.

"Is it all?" asked Natalie, and looked at him penetratingly.

"What do you mean?"

"Is it all?" she repeated, while she slowly rose from her chair. "Have you anything else against him?"

"I have really nothing against him as long as it is not a question of my sister's husband," he hissed; "but in that case everything. And if instead of Lensky he were called Prince Dolgorouki, I would still say, as a husband for you he is impossible!"

"Why--I wish to know it--why?"

"Why? Good. I will tell you, as far as one can tell you--because he is a wild animal, with bursts of roughness of which you cannot form the slightest conception," said Assanow; and, striking his thin hands together, he added, with evidently genuine excitement: "Mais, ma pauvre fille, you have no suspicion to what humiliations, what degradations, you expose yourself."

He stopped. He looked at his sister triumphantly. She still stood before him with her hand resting on the top of the table, staring, pale and without a word. It would be false, to say that his speech made no impression on her. It had made an impression on her. Still, she ascribed all that he said to boundless, passionate opposition. While he spoke it seemed to her as if little pointed icicles were hurled in her face. And weary and wounded from this hailstorm of fruitless prudence, she longed with all her heart for a reconciling delusion.

He misunderstood her apparently great excitement, and in the firm conviction that she already secretly began to fall in with his opinion, he began, this time in a kindly, playful tone: "My poor Natalie, my poor, unwise but always charming sister, you are like children who see that they are wrong and are ashamed to acknowledge it. Well, we will not press you too much. At first it is always painful to be undeceived; but time cures everything, and when you are married to a distinguished and reasonable young fellow--un garçon distingué et raisonnable--who will rationally cure you of your romantic ideas, you will only think of this youthful foolishness with a smile."

She threw back her head and measured him from head to foot. At this moment he seemed to her quite pitiable. How poverty-stricken, how sad was his whole inner life, his feelings, his thoughts, to those to which she had recently accustomed herself! "And you really believe that it could occur to me to give up Boris Nikolaivitch?" said she slowly with proudly curved lips.

"I think, after what I have said to you--" He tried to be patient, and even wished to take her hand, but she drew it back; the touch of his cold, bloodless fingers was unpleasant to her. Yet it had never been so before. What had changed in her?

The prince's face took on a hard, vexed expression. "I think after what I have told you--" he repeated.

"Is it not true, after what you have told me, after the consolation you have offered me, you cannot understand that I keep my word?" said she, challengingly. "What will you, I am now so foolish?" Her voice, veiled at first, became warmer and stronger, while she continued: "You take away summer from me, and offer me winter as consolation--that is, you ask of me that I should refuse everything in the world that blooms and bears fruit, only because sometimes a devastating thunderstorm bursts over this wealth of beauty and life! I know that in a normal winter there are no thunderstorms, and in spite of that I prefer the summer!"

"But it is a tropical summer!" exclaimed Assanow.

"That may be," she replied, calmly; "but for that very reason it is more magnificent--yes, even because of the dangers involved in it--more magnificent than any other."

He stood up. "It is useless to speak to you," said he, coldly; "the only thing that remains for me is to speak to Lensky. He has a clear head in spite of all his genius. He can be talked over."

Then Natalie was startled out of her proud calm. "You would be indelicate enough to say to him what you have said to me!" she burst out.

"In such cases it is not only wisest, but most humane, to use pure prudence instead of foolish sentimentality," announced Assanow; and, bowing to his sister as to a stranger, he left, with all his vexation, still elevated by the thought that he had again had opportunity to display his "prudence" in a brilliant light. He loved his prudence as an artistic capability, and was glad to give proofs, by all kinds of virtuoso performances, of its extent and unusual pliability. Whether these productions were exactly suited to the time troubled the virtuoso little, and that by his last threat he had attained exactly the opposite with Natalie from what he wished, did not occur to him at all, momentarily.

He had gone. Natalie still stood in the middle of the room, her hand resting on the table, and trembling in her whole body. Suddenly the memory of the "musical confession" arose in her, which Lensky had laid before her the morning when he tried the Amati, the confession which had frightened her. And through her mind vibrated, piercingly and cuttingly, the mysterious succession of tones from the Arabian folksongs which echoed lamentingly through all his compositions--the devil's music: Asbeïn.

As long as she had to defend herself from her brother, she had not realized how deeply he had wounded her. She felt at once miserable, wounded, and discontented with life--as a young tree must feel, over whose fragrant young spring blossoms a hailstorm has passed. Then Lensky came in. He perceived in a moment what had happened.

"They have tormented you on my account," said he. "Poor heart! if I could only take all this vexation upon myself."

She smiled at him. "Then I would not be worthy of you," replied she.

He drew her gently toward him. Her discouragement had disappeared; warm, strong life again pulsated in her veins.

"Everything has its recompense," whispered she; "it is sweet to bear something for any one whom----"

"Well, for any one whom--please finish," he urged, and drew her closer to him.

"You know it without."

"I would so love to hear you say it once."

She raised herself on tiptoes and whispered something in his ear.

He held her tighter and tighter to him. "Oh, my happiness, my queen!" he murmured, and his warm lips met hers.

She felt as if wrapped in a sunbeam, in a warm, animating atmosphere, through which none of the critical sneers and opinions of those who stood without the consecrated magic circle of love could penetrate.

* * * * * *

Six weeks later Natalie and Lensky were married, and at the Russian Embassy in Vienna. Her dowry consisted of a very incomplete trousseau, in part lavishly trimmed with lace; of a mortgaged estate in South Russia that had brought in no rents for three years; and of three Cremona violins.

While her elder brother silently concealed the true despair which the marriage caused him behind stiff dignity, the younger, an officer of the guard, with a becoming talent for arrogant impertinences, pleased himself by jesting over this adventurous marriage, and describing the "strange taste" of his sister, with a shrug of the shoulders, as a case of acute monomania. When he spoke of his brother-in-law, he called him nothing but "cette bête sauvage et indécrottable," even when he had long made a practice of borrowing money of him.

Neither of Natalie's brothers or her married sister appeared at her wedding. Only the old princess accompanied her daughter to the altar.

SECOND BOOK.

They trifled away the summer on the Italian coast and in Switzerland. In the autumn Lensky made a concert tour through Germany and the Netherlands, on which his young wife accompanied him, and attempted with humorous zeal to accustom herself to the role of an artist's wife. In the beginning of December Lensky and she came to St. Petersburg. The residence had been prepared for the young pair by a friend of Natalie. Natalie made a discontented face when she entered her new kingdom. How new, how glaring, how unsuitable and tasteless everything looked. "It is as if one bit into a green apple," said she; and turning to Lensky she added, gayly, with a shrug of her shoulders: "The stupid Annette did not know any better; but do not trouble yourself. In a couple of weeks it will be different. You shall see how comfortably I will cushion your nest. You must feel happy in it, my restless eagle, or else you will fly away from me. What?"

She said this, smiling in proud consciousness of his passionate love. What pleasure would it give him to fly away? And teasingly, jestingly, she pushed back the thick hair from his temples.

Ah, how pleasant and yet tantalizing was the touch of her slender, delicate fingers, which made him at once nervous and happy! As he expressed it, it "almost made him jump out of his skin with rapture." At first he let her continue her foolish, tender playfulness to her heart's content; then he laughingly put himself on the defensive, preached a more dignified manner to her, and when she did not yield, but gayly continued her lovely, teasing ways, he at length seized her violently by both wrists and quite crushed her hands with kisses.

If in the first weeks of their married life both had been quite solemn, thoughtful, and confused in their manner to each other, now they often frolicked together like two gay children.

While he took up again his long-interrupted duties at the Petersburg Conservatory, she built him "his nest." She did not go lavishly to work. Oh, no! She knew that one must not press down a young artist with the burden of material cares. She imagined she was very economical. She did not cease to wonder over the cheapness with which she could get everything that was needed, beginning with the flowers--flowers in winter, in St. Petersburg! He never enlightened her as to how much the footing on which she maintained her "simple household" surpassed his present circumstances.

Every time that he came home he found a new, attractive change. She accomplished great things in artistic arrangement of the so-called "confused style," which at that time was not so common as to-day, but was still a bold innovation.

"C'est tres joli, mais un peu trop touffu," said he to her once when she met him, quite particularly conscious of victory and awaiting praise, with the knowledge of a new, costly improvement in the arrangement of the drawing-room.

"Yes, my love; but a drawing-room is neither an official audience-room nor a gymnasium," replied she, somewhat offended.

"Nor a ball-room nor riding-school," completed he, jestingly; "but--h'm--still one should be able to move in it. Do you not think so?"

"That is as one looks at it. I have nothing to do with it if you cannot brandish around too freely in it."

* * * * * *

They went out in society quite frequently--in Natalie's society. That many people, especially Natalie's near relations, made comments on the marriage of the spoiled child of a prince with a violinist is easily understood. But scarcely had they seen Boris and his young wife together a few times when the comments ceased. A full, true, young human happiness always causes respect, and, like every achievement, bears its triumphant justification in itself. The leader of fashion, Princess Lydia Petrovna B., declared publicly, and, indeed, in the highest court circles, that in her opinion Natalie had acted very wisely.

Countess Sophie Dimitrievna went a step further when she energetically declared that she envied Natalie. From that time every one vied in fêting the young couple and distinguishing them.

They both enjoyed society, but the best part of it was not entering the brilliantly illuminated reception-rooms or being surrounded by wondering strangers. Oh, no! the best of all was the last quarter of an hour before they left their home, when Lensky, already in evening dress, entered the dressing-room of his young wife. Each time he felt anew the same pleasant excitement when he, slowly turning the knob, after a teasing, "May I come in, Natalie?" entered the cosey room. How charming and attractive everything was there! The room with the light carpet and the comfortable, not too numerous articles of cretonne-upholstered furniture; the two tiny gold-embroidered slippers on the rough bear-skin in front of the lounge; not far off, Natalie's house-dress, thrown over a chair, exhaling the warmth of her young, fresh, fragrant personality. Then there on the toilet-table, with clouds of white muslin over the pink lining, and with sparkling silver and crystal utensils, a pretty confusion of half-opened white lace boxes, and on the table dark velvet jewel-cases. The pleasant, mild, and still bright light of many pink wax-candles, which stood about in high, heavy silver candelabra, and the warm, strange, seductive atmosphere which filled the whole room--an atmosphere which was permeated with the fragrance of greenhouse flowers, burning wax-candles, and the pleasant, subtle, spicy Indian perfume which clung to all Natalie's effects.

And there, before the tall cheval-glass, Natalie, already in evening toilet, almost ready, her beautiful arms hanging down in pampered helplessness; behind her a maid, just finished fastening her corsage, and a second, with a three-branched candelabra in her hand, throwing the light upon her mistress.

Was that really his wife? This splendid, queenly being in the white silk dress--she wore white silk in preference--really the wife of the violinist, in whose life, not so far back, lay all kind of need, humiliation, trouble of all kind?

Then she looked around. She had a charming manner of holding her small hands half against her cheeks, half against her neck, and turning slowly from the glass and looking at him with lowered eyelids, and a kind of mischievously proud and yet tenderly suppressed consciousness of victory. "Are you satisfied, Boris?"

What could he answer?

"You come just as if called," then said she. "You shall put the hair-pins in my hair. Katia is so awkward." Then she sat down in a low chair, and handed him the hair-pins. They were wonderful hair-pins, the heads of which were narcissi formed of diamonds, a bridal present from Lensky. He took them with gentle fingers, and the celebrated artist was proud if his young wife praised him for the taste with which he fastened her diamonds in her hair.

* * * * * *

"Natalie!" exclaimed Boris, in a tone of the greatest surprise--a surprise made up of the greatest astonishment and not of joy--"you here?"

It was in his study, and nine o'clock in the morning. At this hour, daily, in crying opposition to his former proverbial unreliability, he had long been sitting at his writing-table. But that Natalie should leave her bedroom before ten o'clock had hitherto been an unheard-of occurrence.

But to-day, just as he was about to go to the piano, to try on that modest representative of an orchestra a completed musical phrase, he discovered her. Quite unobserved, she had mischievously crept in, and now crouched comfortably in a large arm-chair, which formed a very picturesque frame for her silk wrapper, bordered with black fur. She sat on one foot; one tiny gold-embroidered Caucasian slipper lay before her on the floor, and she smiled tenderly at her husband with her great, proud eyes. But the pride disappeared from her glance at his ejaculation, an ejaculation which expressed so much perplexity, so little joy. She started and, embarrassed, reached out for her slipper with the tip of her foot.

"Do I disturb you?" she asked, anxiously. "Must I go?"

Formerly he could not bear to have any one about him when he worked. His face wore a forced, smiling expression, while he assured her:

"Oh, not in the slightest--pray sit down." Whereupon he pushed his chair up to hers.

"Oh, if you are going to treat me so!" said she.

"How, then?" asked he.

"Like--like any visitor," she burst out, and hastened to the door. He brought her back. Then he saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"But what is the matter?"

"I am ashamed of my intrusion, that is all. Adieu--I will not disturb you further!"

With that she wished to free herself from him. But that was not so easy. He took her, struggling in his arms like a child, and carried her back by force to the immense chair which they had left. "So now, sit there, and don't spoil my mood, you witch. Why should I not enjoy your company for a little? Do you think, then, that I am not glad to see you? But you do not expect that I should bend over the table, and spoil paper, while a charming little woman sits behind me? The temptation to talk to you is too great."

She shook her head. "You wish to be good to me, but you pain me," murmured she. And she added, flatteringly, "Can you really not work when I am with you?"

"Would you like it if I could?" he asked, and looked at her with a quite new, penetrating expression in his eyes.

He drew his brows together humorously; he was now kneeling before her, and held both her hands in his. "You are not only a charming little woman, Natalie," said he, "but, what very few such beautiful and seductive women are, of a good heart. But still I have noticed one thing in you, namely, that you do not like to be second anywhere. And, do you see, everywhere else you are not only the first, but the only one in the world for me; but here, Natalie, here it must please you that I should forget you for my art!"

"And do you think that I would wish it otherwise?" said she, and there was an earnest, solemn expression in her eyes which he never forgot. "Oh, you blind one, you do not yet know me at all. Do not kneel there like a hero in a romance; in the long run, it looks not only awkward but uncomfortable. Sit down by me--there is room enough in this immense chair for us both. So! and now--now I will confess to you what I have already so long had on my heart. Do you see, you love me, I do not doubt that, how should I? but--do not be angry with me--sometimes I wish that you loved me differently; I wish to be not only your petted wife, your plaything----"

"My plaything!" he interrupted her, very reproachfully. "Oh, Natalie! my sanctuary!"

"Well, then, as far as I am concerned, your sanctuary. That, looked at in one light, is also only a plaything, even if of the most distinguished kind." She laughed somewhat constrainedly. "It is certainly immoderate," she continued, and hesitated a little, "horribly immoderate, but still it is so--I--I do not want to be only your plaything, but also your friend--do not be horrified at this audacity--yes, your friend, your confidante. I wish to be the first to share your newly arising thoughts. Lately, it has often hurt me that you busy yourself so much with all kinds of trifles only to give me pleasure. I know it is my fault; at first I was afraid of your genius, which soared heavenward, and wished to accustom you to the earth, and chain you close to me. But then--then I was ashamed of my smallness--ah, so ashamed. You shall not stoop down to me; let me try to rise to you. Spread out your mighty wings, and fly up to the stars, but take me with you!"

He could not speak--only kisses burned on his lips. He pressed them on her wonderful eyes, whose holy light humiliated him. Then, after a while, he murmured, softly: "You are nearer the stars than I, Natalie. Show me the way, show me the way!"

* * * * * *

From then, she daily passed a couple of hours in his study. How happy she felt in the great, airy room, which was almost as empty as a shed. In here she had not ventured with her soft, seductive, decorative arts. All had remained as sober and plain as he had always been accustomed to have his surroundings while at work. High shelves almost breaking under their weight of music, a piano, a couple of stringed instruments, the arm-chair in which he had established her, and two or three cane-bottomed chairs constituted the whole furniture. On the writing-table stood a picture of Natalie, painted in water-colors by a young French artist in Rome. The room could show no other ornament. Still, there in the darkest corner hung a single laurel-wreath. No large one, such as one lays to-day at the feet of great artists, but poor and small, and in the middle of the wreath, in a common wooden frame, drawn with a hard lead-pencil, the face of a woman, with a white cloth on her head, from beneath which fine, curly hair fell over the forehead. Without being beautiful, the face was strangely attractive, and Natalie would have liked to ask the history of the laurel-wreath and the picture. But she did not venture to. She never, by a single question, touched upon Lensky's past.

He only continued to remain in solitude during the hours which he devoted to technical practice. At other times he quietly let her stay. She sat behind him, quite soberly and still, in the large, worn-out patriarchal chair, and did not breathe a word. She never even took a book in her hand, for fear of irritating him by the rattling of turning pages, but busied herself with pretty, noiseless handiwork.

The feeling of her presence was unendingly sweet to him. His whole activity was increased; he worked more intently than formerly. A fulness of music vibrated in his head and heart. And if the inward vibrations became too dreamily sweet, too luxuriant and exuberant, he stopped writing, sat awhile in silence, and then, without taking the slightest notice of Natalie, walked up and down a couple of times, hummed something to himself, made a sweeping gesture, in conclusion took up the violin--then----

Natalie raised her head and listened--how wonderful that sounded! He had unlearned the madness, but still in his melodies always sounded the strange Arabian succession of tones, the devil's music: Asbeïn!

She became, as she had wished, the confidante of his work. When he had sketched on paper the plan of a composition, he played it to her, now on his violin, which he passionately loved, now on the piano, which he did not love; for its short tone, incapable of development, repulsed him, but which he respected and made use of as the most complete of all instruments. Although he played the piano, not with virtuosity, but with the helplessness of the composer, he could still bring out something of the "warm tone" which made his violin irresistible.

How eagerly she listened to his compositions! How much she rejoiced in them, and how severe she was to him! She would not let him pass over a single musical flaw. That she rejoiced and wept over the beauties in his compositions, that she boldly placed his genius near Beethoven and Schumann, that is to say, near what she ranked highest in the world, that was another thing! For that reason she was so severe. He laughed at her sometimes for her tender delusion. Then she took his head between her hands, and said, triumphantly: "That is all very well; only wait a little while, then the whole world will say that you have been the last musical poet: the others are only bunglers."

* * * * * *

In the beginning of March he made a short artist tour through the interior of Russia. Naturally, he could not drag her around with him, for she could not endure the exhausting fatigues of his quick journeys, especially at that time. But how horrible, how unbearable the parting seemed to him! He wrote her every day. His writing was ugly and irregular, his orthography as deficient in French as in Russian; but what tenderness, what passion and poetry spoke from every uncultured, stormily written line. No one could better impress his whole heart in a short, insignificant letter than he; and what rapture, what wild, almost painful rapture at seeing her again! She had missed him much less than he had missed her. He reproached her for it, complained that the new love which now began to fill her whole existence left no place for the old. But then she measured him with such a tender, and, at the same time, a so deeply hurt look, that he was ashamed.

"You must not take it so," he whispered to her, appeasingly. "It is an old story that if two hearts hasten forward together in a race of love, one will naturally outdo the other, and still will be vexed that it is so. But it is quite natural and in order that I should cling more to you than you to me."

She smiled quite sadly. "We will see who will win the race in the end," murmured she.

* * * * * *

Natalie no longer went into society. Her health was much impaired. She passed the entire month of April stretched on her lounge, in loose wrappers. She now reproached herself with having been foolish not to have spared herself before. The time of tormenting fancy approached for the young wife, the time of concealed anxiety for them both. In spite of the consoling assurances of the physician, Lensky was no longer himself, from anxiety and despair. But he did not let her notice it. When he was with her he had always a gay smile on his lips and a droll story for her diversion. He cared for her like a mother.

Then, toward the end of May, came the most tormenting hour he had ever lived through, until at last--when he already believed that all hope was lost--a little, thin, shrill sound smote his ear. It startled him, his heart beat loudly; still he did not venture to move, but listened, until at last the doctor came out of the adjoining room, and called to him: "All is over."

He misunderstood the words. "She is dead!" he gasped.

"No, no! Boris Nikolaivitch; everything is as well as possible. Come!"

He felt as would a man buried alive, if one should raise the lid from his coffin.

At the door of the bedroom a fat old woman, with a large cap, came toward him. "A son, a very fine young one!" said she, triumphantly, while she laid something tiny and rosy, wrapped in white cloth and lace, in his arms.

Tears fell from his eyes, and his hands trembled so that the nurse was horrified and took the child away from him.

He went up to Natalie, who, deathly pale and exhausted, but with a lovely, indescribable expression on her face, at once of tenderness and of a certain solemn pride, lay among the high-piled pillows. Quite softly, with a kind of timidity which his violent love had hitherto never known, he pressed her pale hand to his lips.

"Are you content?" she whispered, dreamily and scarcely audibly. "Are you content?"

* * * * * *

She recovered rapidly. Her beauty had lost none of its charm, but had rather won an earnest--one might almost say consecrated--loveliness.

Her face reflected her happiness. That also had become a shade deeper, nobler. In spite of all her pampered habits, she insisted upon caring for the child herself. He let her have her way.

The former dressing-room was changed to a nursery. Sometimes, in the long, transparent twilight of the spring, he entered the room in which, in winter, he had passed so many charming hours by candle-light, and where now everything was so changed. A cradle stood in the place which formerly the toilet-table had occupied--ah, what a cradle--a dream of a cradle! A basket with a canopy of green silk, hung with a long, transparent lace veil, a costly nest for a young bird whose little eyes must be shielded, by all kinds of tender devices, from the bright light, which perhaps later would pain him so!

The air, quite filled with a pleasant, mild, damp vapor, was permeated by a weak perfume of iris and warming linen, and, besides that, with something quite strange, quite peculiarly sweet, stirring--the breath of a healthy, fresh, carefully cared-for little child.

And there, where the cheval-glass had formerly reflected to him the lovely form of a proud queen of beauty, now sat in the same large arm-chair, a tender young mother, her child on her breast. The lines of her neck, from which the loose, white dress had slipped down a little so that the outline of the shoulders was visible, was charming; but what was it, to the lovely, attentive expression with which she looked down at the child?

Everything about her expressed tenderness: her look, her smile, the hands with which she held the child to her. It was just these small, white hands which Lensky could not cease to observe. How helpless they had formerly been--and now! She would scarcely let the nurse touch baby. He was never weary of watching how untiringly she touched the tiny, frail body of the infant, and did a thousand services for it which all resembled caresses.

* * * * * *

"It is all very beautiful, but you have a manner of ignoring me in this little kingdom," said Lensky, jokingly, to the young mother, while he threw a look of humorous vexation at the young despot whom she just laid in the cradle.

She bent her head a little to one side, and whispered roguishly, while she came up to him and played with the lapel of his coat: "Do you see, Boris, this is my study. Everywhere else you are not only the first but the only one in the world for me; but here you must be content if I sometimes forget you for my calling."

He laughed.

"Do you know that you once said something similar to me; that time when I, for the first time, dared to enter your sanctuary?" she murmured, and repeated petulantly: "Do you know it?"

He kissed both of her hands, one after the other. "Do you then believe that I could ever forget such a thing, my angel?" whispered he. "I am no such spendthrift; oh, no! If you knew how I cherish this dear remembrance! That is pure happiness which we will keep for our old days, when the sun no longer seems to us to shine as brightly, and we must light a poor candle in order to find our path again to a suitable grave."

* * * * * *

Natalie still thought of the poor laurel wreath in his study. But she did not venture to ask him a direct question about it.

He himself, of his own accord, at last told her the history of the pitiful relic.

He had never spoken to her of his childhood, but once a great impulse came over him to tell her the whole; to lay bare before her all the pitiableness of his past. What would she then say to it?

It was a clear summer night, out on the terrace of the country house near St. Petersburg, which they had hired for the summer, the terrace which looked out on the small but pretty and shady garden. They sat there, hand in hand; around them the dull, gray light of a day that will not die, sweet perfume of flowers, and in the tree tops the gentle rustling of the kissing leaves. She talked of gay, insignificant things; gave him a droll, laughing description of a visit to one of her friends. At first it amused him; then something, he could not have said what, irritated him against this monstrous principle of gliding so triflingly and mockingly through life without ever glancing into it more deeply.

"What would she say if she knew?" thought he. "Perhaps she would shun me!" A kind of madness overcame him. He felt the wish to risk his happiness in order to convince himself of its durability, to put his petted wife to the test. "How you butterflies, floating over flowers in the sunshine, must be horrified at the miserable worms who creep over the earth!" he began bitterly.

"What are you thinking of?" asked she, astonished.

"Nothing especial, only that I was originally just such a worm, creeping over the earth."

"Ah! that is long past!" she interrupted him hastily. She wished to keep him from long dwelling on an unpleasant thought, but he suspected that his insinuation of his humble antecedents vexed her, and that she felt the need of forgetting his derivation. He looked at her from head to foot, with an angry, wondering glance. Her richly embroidered white dress, the large diamonds in her ears,--how the diamonds sparkled in the dull evening light!

Then he began to speak of his childhood, dryly, with a smile on his lips as if it was a question of something quite indifferent and amusing.

In a large tenement at Moscow, overcrowded with all kinds of human vermin, had he grown up; in the half of a room that was divided by a sail, behind which another poor family hungered. His father he did not remember. His mother sang to the guitar in wine rooms. When he was five years old she had bought him a fiddle for four rubles, and then some one, a dissolute musician, who often came to them, had taught him to scrape on it a little. From that time he accompanied his mother when she sang in the wine rooms,--or even on the streets, as it happened.

She had been pretty; the drawing which hung in the laurel wreath, and which an artist in their horrible dwelling-place had made of her, was like her. Only she had quite unusually beautiful teeth which one could not see in the picture. He remembered these teeth very well, because she laughed so much, especially if there was little to eat and she made him take it all, and declared she had spoiled her appetite at a friend's house with fresh pirogj. Once the thought had occurred to him that she only said so because there was not enough for two, and then he could not eat anything more. If there was nothing at all to eat, either for him or for her, she told him a story.

Had he loved her? Yes, he believed so--how could it be otherwise? But the consciousness of what she really had been to him only came to him when he was no longer with her. How that happened he really did not know, but one fine day she took him in a part of the city which he had never known until then, in a handsome residence that seemed so beautiful to him that he only ventured to go around on tiptoes. At the door a fat, yellow man, with long, greasy, black hair, received him, and told his mother it was all right. Then she kissed him a last time, told him she would take him away in an hour, and went.

He was taken in a room with gay furniture, and there greeted by a fat woman with a thick gold chain over the bosom of her violet silk dress, and with rings on all her short, stumpy, wrinkled fingers, and was entertained with tea, cake, and honey. He had never before enjoyed a similar repast. He felt in an elevated frame of mind.

When the fat man--he was a mediocre musician who had married a rich merchant's daughter, who gave him none of her money, however--told him that he should always stay with him, and never go back to his mother, he was glad, and felt the consciousness of having taken a step forward in the world.

Did that surprise Natalie? He could not help it, it was still so. "Strange what roughness men show before a little bit of civilization has taught them to conceal it," he added reflectively.

Did he not feel anxiety later? Natalie wished to know. Yes, for his new life contained nothing of that which he had promised himself. That he should live in the beautiful rooms with the master and mistress and eat with them, as he had thought at first, had been an illusion. Only the two children of the fat daughter of the merchant could tumble around on the sofas, with their fiery-red, woolen, damask covering, and could help themselves from all the dishes.

He lived on charity; they told him that every day. The musician had bought him of his mother for fifty rubles, as Lensky afterward learned, as a speculation, in order to make money out of him as a prodigy. The time which he did not devote to his musical practice he must spend helping the maid in the kitchen.

He slept, with an old sofa pillow under his head, on the floor, in a gloomy little room, without window, only with dirty panes of glass in the door--a room in which the cook put all kinds of rubbish. Dampness ran down the walls, and every evening from all corners crept out a whole regiment of black beetles, and spread themselves over the boards. The food? Well, it was sparing. Sometimes he only received what the family had left on their plates.

Was he not angry at this treatment? No. He found it quite in order at that time. The well-fed, warmly dressed people impressed him, especially the cap of Vauvara Ivanovna--that was the name of his mistress. He felt a respectful shudder pass over him every time he saw this structure of blonde, red flowers, and green ribbon. Except the Kremlin, nothing impressed him so much as this house.

When the whole family, in festival attire, went to church on Sunday, he stood at the door, quite oppressed by the feeling of modest wonder, and looked after the well-dressed, well-fed people. He did his best to make himself useful and agreeable, and to please them. Yes, he was just so small and pitiable, as a half-starved six-year-old pigmy. And then, in conclusion, one day he simply could bear it no longer and ran back to his mother. He found the way. With that quite animal sense of locality and traces, which only children of the lowest classes of men have, he found it. His mother was at home; she was frightened when she saw him. Had they turned him out? Yes, she was frightened. In the first moment she was frightened; then--here Lensky stammered in his confession--naturally she was glad; for, what use of losing words?--naturally she was glad. How she kissed him and caressed him with her poor, rough, toil-worn, and still such gentle, warm hands. He still felt her hands sometimes on him, in dreams, especially behind his ears and on his neck. Then she fed him. She spread a red and white flowered cloth over the table in his honor, and after that she gave him a holy picture. Then she said it could not be otherwise; he must go back to Simon Ephremitsch; it was for his own good. When he had become a great artist, then he would come to fetch her in a coach with four horses.

That impressed him. And in order to calm him completely, she promised to visit him very soon.

But she did not come; and when he ran back to her, after about a month, she was no longer in her old abode; he never found her! Soon afterward she sent him two pretty little shirts, delicately embroidered in red and blue. But she herself did not come. Never!

At his first appearance in public--he had performed his piece with the anxious assiduity of a little monkey that fears a blow, he asserted--to his great astonishment, he was applauded. In the midst of the hand-clapping he suddenly heard a sob. He was convinced that his mother had been at the concert.

At the conclusion they handed him a laurel wreath, the same which now hung in his room; quite a poor woman had brought it, they said. He guessed immediately that the wreath came from his mother; and suddenly, just as a couple of music-lovers had stepped on the stage, in order to see the wonderful little animal near by, he began to stamp his feet and clench his fists, to scream and to sob, until every one crowded around him. His principal threatened him with blows; a very pretty young lady in a blue-silk dress took him on her lap to quiet him; but all was of no use.

He saw his mother once more--in her coffin.

His benefactor told him that she was dead, and that, after all, it was suitable that he should show her the last honors. The coffin stood on a table, surrounded by thin, poorly-burning candles, and she lay within, so small and thin, her hands folded on her breast, in a poor shroud, that they had bought ready made for a few copecks.

In the beginning, Natalie had interrupted him with questions, but now she had long been silent. He looked at her challengingly, at every pitiful, repulsive detail, especially if it brought forward a trace of his own insignificance. It was quite as if he expressly tried to pain her. But when he came to speak of the death of his mother, whose form, in the midst of his glaring, sharp description, he drew so tenderly and vaguely, obliterating everything disturbing, as if he saw her, in remembrance, only through tears, he closed his eyes.

Suddenly he heard near him a suppressed sound of pain, then something like the falling of the over-abundant load of blossoms from a tree among whose spring adornment there yet moves no breath of air.

He started, looked up--there was Natalie on her knees before him, the beauty, the queenly, proud one, and had embraced him with both arms, as if she would shield him from all the woes of earth, and sobbed as if she could not console herself for his past suffering.

"Natalie! my angel, do you really love me so?"

"One cannot love you enough, or recompense you enough for all that you have missed," whispered she.

And he had really for one moment suspected that----

He raised her on his knees. They did not speak another word. Through the garden at their feet the birches rustled in the mild night breeze, and from the distance one heard the sad voice of a marsh bird, who with heavy beating wings flew to the neighboring pond.

The most beautiful love will always be that which has been sanctified by a great compassion. In that mild summer night, while all around them was fragrance and veiled light, Natalie's love had received its consecration.

* * * * * *

Three, four years passed; a second little child lay in the pretty, veiled cradle, from which little Nikolai first made his solemn observation of the world--a dear little plump maiden, whom they baptized Mascha, after the grandmother, and whom Boris particularly idolized. There was still nothing to report of Natalie's married life but love, happiness, and beauty. Lensky kept every unpleasant impression far from her, surrounded her with the most touching care, overwhelmed her with the most poetic attentions. Her life at his side unrolled itself like a long, secret, passionate love-poem.

Natalie's family had reconciled themselves to her marriage. Even for the wise and arrogant Sergei Alexandrovitch it had the appearance that he had been mistaken in his discouraging prediction, as happens even to the wisest men, if with their predictions they have only the sober probability in view, without thinking of the possibility of some underlying miracle. After four years of married life Natalie was as happy as a bride.

Still, Lensky's happiness was not as unclouded as that of his wife. A great unpleasantness became ever more significant to him, the quite universal coldness of his artistic relations.

It would be wrong to believe that Natalie, with systematic jealousy, had wished to estrange him from the world of artists. On the contrary, she had complied with his wish to make her acquainted with his colleagues and their families, had herself asked it of him, flatteringly.

The world of artists interested her. There, everything was more animated, more meaning, than the eternal sameness of good society which she knew by heart, quite by heart, she assured him tenderly. She made it her ambition to win his acquaintances for hers. But strangely enough, in spite of all her seductive loveliness, she succeeded only very incompletely.

She had already known the élite among the artists. There is nothing further to be said of her relations with these favored of the gods, exceptional existences, than that she always felt honored by intercourse with them, and pleased, and that, when with them she ever vexed herself over the worn-out old commonplace, that one should avoid the acquaintance of famous men in order to prevent disappointment--a commonplace which was probably invented for the consolation of those who, in advance, are excluded from intercourse with celebrities. That Natalie always succeeded in winning the sympathies of these exceptional natures stands for itself.

But when it was a question of that great crowd of artists, of the mixture of sickly vanity, embarrassed affairs, depressing relations, etc., then it was hard to build up a friendship between Lensky's wife and his old colleagues.

Envy of Lensky, envy which had reference largely to his artistic results, and in a less degree to his marriage and social position, peeped out everywhere from these people, and had its own results in soon completely embittering the not very pleasant relations between them and Natalie.